Act Your Way Into Right Thinking

I cannot believe that after 104 days I am still hearing new AA slogans, but today I did:

You must act your way into right thinking, you cannot think your way into right acting.

This has been stuck in my head all day for two reasons. One, I cannot believe this is the first I’ve ever heard of it, and two, because, frankly, I did not understand it. I needed to have it repeated twice, and I had a bunch of follow-up questions to better understand its meaning.

My main hold-up to embracing the slogan this morning: if I am in early recovery (and I am), then the one thing I know for sure is that my thinking is frequently not right (and that is being kind to myself). So if I can’t trust my thinking, then why would I act on it? The answer made sense for people in recovery… you don’t trust your thinking, you trust people in the Program with good sobriety to lead the way for you. You act based on their suggestion, and it is by those actions that your thinking will become right.

But as I contemplated the slogan, I realized it, like all the others in AA, is completely applicable to the entire human race, not just to addicts. So if I want to have a healthy lifestyle, I can sit around and think about all the changes I need to make with regard to diet and exercise, while I continue to eat and be sedentary… or I can just get up and move my body, I can pick up a piece of fruit instead of a chip. Thinking about doing anything simply does not “get ‘er done!”